Blumenthal, And The Banality Of Planned Parenthood

“It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us -- the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil

The relationship between U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal and Connecticut’s left of center media during his twenty years and more as the state’s Attorney General has been a cordial one. There are reasons for this. A consumer protection Attorney General, Mr. Blumenthal found it easy to press all the right buttons, and journalistic experience he had acquired at Harvard – he was an active journalist for the Harvard Crimson – put him in good odor with newspaper editors. A sampling of Mr. Blumenthal’s news reporting is preserved even today in the news morgue of the Harvard Crimson.

  

No one has toted up the number of media releases issued by Mr. Blumenthal during his stint as Attorney General; occasionally, editors would receive more than one a day, all finely wrought, infrequently altered and ready to be inserted into news stories fashioned largely by Mr. Blumenthal. His run as Attorney General was relatively unmarred by disturbing editorials that disagreed sharply with his many prosecutions of wayward businesses, and the copy he provided to Connecticut’s media was rhetorically edgy. Mr. Blumenthal’s work as Attorney General fit neatly into the world-view of Connecticut’s shakers and movers. When Mr. Blumenthal moved into the U.S. Senate in 2011, he carried his strengths and weaknesses with him. Among some critics, he is known as Connecticut’s first “consumer protection U.S. Senator.”  He might as easily be called “the Senator from Planned Parenthood.”

Planned Parenthoodis the largest provider of abortion in the United States, and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) is its prophet and political arm. On the question of abortion regulation, Mr. Blumenthal, unfailingly endorsed by NARAL, tends to an extremist view: Abortion must not be regulated at any time, for any reason; this is also the official policy of the national Democratic Party. But considering Mr. Blumenthal unmarred record as regulator-in-chief in his home state, it is an odd tack for a consumer protection Senator to take. At all other times during his public career, he was and is a regulatory dervish; as Attorney General, Mr. Blumenthal was indefatigable in recommending to Connecticut’s pro-regulatory Democratic dominated General Assembly laws he supposed would “level the business playing field,” one of his most often used expressions, so that competitors could meet each other on equal terms. And the plow that leveled the playing field was, of course, statutory regulation recommended by Mr. Blumenthal.

Senator Blumenthal is sponsor of the Women's Health Protection Act of 2013 (S.1696). Introduced by Blumenthal as a bill that “would create federal protections against state restrictions on abortion that do not advance women’s health and safety, and instead create barriers to accessing this safe and legal medical procedure,” the measure was touted by Judy Taba, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, Inc. in triumphant terms: “A record number of bills have been signed across the country that restrict a woman’s access to safe and legal abortion. The Women’s Health Protection Act would put an end to politicians interfering with a woman’s personal health care decisions. A woman’s constitutional rights should not vary based on where she lives.” The bill prevents any of the states, including Connecticut, from passing any legislation that would regulate the abortion industry.

In Mr. Blumenthal’s sheltered world, Planned Parenthood -- much in the news lately for having haggled in a sting operation with body-part purchasers concerning prices to be paid for livers and hearts and muscle tissue harvested by Planned Parenthood from dismembered babies – is one of the few multi-million dollar international businesses that is to be free from regulations regularly pumped out by Connecticut’s first consumer protection U.S. Senator.

For the abortionist, late term abortion is a challenge and a fetish. Abortion is also, as Planned Parenthood well understands, a lucrative business that daily is growing less lucrative. Fewer abortions are being performed among young people, in part because scientific technologies such as ultrasound graphically dispute the central premise of the abortion industry – namely,  that the waste-product aborted falls short of being a baby, and never mind that both doctors and pregnant women refer to late life in the womb in human terms. There is no one in the United States who does not know with scientific certainty that their U.S. Senator was at some point in his development a helpless fetus saved from the abortionist’s scissors by the love and care of his mother.

If Planned Parenthood were dealing in Big Oil rather than body parts taken from late term abortions,  the recent videos showing Planned Parenthood administrators haggling over the proper price of a liver taken from a suspiciously human fetus would discourage legislators from offering such bills as have been proposed by Connecticut’s consumer protection Senator. Those who look evil in the eye and succumb to it easily and cheerily are no strangers to the banality of evil vigorously condemned by Hanna Arendt.